I walk into a brand new store with an already established team in a week. I’ve been a tech, advisor and service manager before but it was always a team where I came up through the ranks. This time I’m new to them and they’re new to me.
If you had a new service manager coming in, on day 1, what would you want them to do? Open to whatever. I can feed them, gift them all a 10mm (ha!) Or something else useful. Or?
This is a team that didn’t like the previous guy. He didn’t trust his techs, didn’t quite understand the shop. Genuinely, I want their lives to be easier but for day 1, I just want an icebreaker. .
We had rotating Saturday shifts at one of the shops I worked at, and if you had to work Saturday lunch was comped. We’d pick a restaurant and order and the porter would go pick it up. Always made the weekend shift a bit more tolerable.
In all seriousness though the only thing I want out of a service manager is someone who has my back and doesn’t micromanage me.